We’re working on an advanced course deep-diving into Objects in AutoHotkey. In the Intermediate AutoHotkey course I covered some of the basics of storing data in Objects however, with the help of RaptorX / Isaias Baez I’m creating a course that dives deep into AutoHotkey Objects and Classes
We’re finalizing the outline and beginning to produce the videos. Below is a current peak into what will be covered. If you’d like to stay informed, please complete this short form and we’ll keep you in the loop!
AutoHotkey Objects and Classes
What AutoHotkey objects and classes are and why you should learn them
What can be done with objects
Diving into: Items, Keys, Properties and Methods
Quick refresher on Functions
Object Types (Arrays, Associative Arrays, Multi-dimensional arrays, Maps (new in V2)
Advantages & Disadvantages of Dot Notation and Object Oriented Principles
In this video we discuss why Rufaydium has so much potential, some of the things we hope it has built into it, and the alternatives like Chrome.ahk and Selenium.
Automate Chrome with Rufaydium and AutoHotkey First Tutorial
Our first Rufaydium tutorial we walk through how to set it up and how to Automate Chrome with Rufaydium
How to use a Chrome Profile with Rufaydium and AutoHotkey
We’re getting closer to AHKCon which is going to be on August 6th and 7th. Each day we’ll be starting at 10:00 a.m. EDT and going for four hours each day. If you haven’t already signed up to be notified of updates, you can do so here
To be sure we provide content that is helpful for attendees we’re making a few assumptions
You can understand English
You’ve been using AutoHotkey for 6 months (or have 1 year+ programming experience in other languages)
The Conference will be held in a Zoom Webinar and sessions will be the following two formats:
Lectures (people present a “how to” do something with AutoHotkey
Panels (a group of AHK experts discuss a given topic)
While we have a good handle on the topics for the panels, we’d really like to get you to vote on the topics for AHKCon lectures.
Last week, I talked about how important it is to consider your audience when you’re “selling” AutoHotkey/ your services. This really applies to anytime you’re trying to convince someone of anything but let’s keep the focus on AutoHotkey.
Here’s a little slap of reality: Until you learn how to sell, you’re not going to enjoy the kind of success you’re entitled to. You may want to fight this but I’m telling you, learning how to “sell” (sway others to your perspective) you’re always going to be fighting a battle.
First realize-it’s NOT YOUR FAULT. Don’t blame yourself for lacking the skill to know how to sell to your clients. Sadly we never focus on this type of thing in schools / college. And you may even be offended that I’m discussing “sales” with you…a professional. But the sad truth is it really isn’t the “best mouse trap” that wins. It’s the “best mouse trap” in the mind of the prospect.
Thinking of yourself as a “salesperson” might shock you. You’re probably thinking, “But Joe, I’m not a salesperson. I’m a professional. I help people, and I don’t need to sell.”
Let me gently but firmly tell you that you’re mistaken. And it wasn’t until I figured this out that I began “winning” with clients.
There’s nothing like the satisfaction of sitting down with someone and communicating with them on such a deep level that, by the time you’re finished, they’re thanking you profusely and want to hug you for helping them.
If you’re new to this mentality here are a few solid books that I refer back to over and over:
I was annoyed with how my icons resort each other and asked Isaias if he had any ideas how Windows is keeping track of the order. He suggested we use Microsoft’s Process Monitor which is a free tool included in system Internals suite. Check out our video which helps show how to use it.
Getting help from the-Automator (and other sources)
I’m so stoked that my AutoHotkey channel is getting more and more subscribers (it’s a bitter-sweet feeling that I passed Hellbent in the number of subscribers however I’ve bugged him about getting back to making more!) Anyway I’m getting more and more requests to help people but I just don’t have the bandwidth to help everyone (besides, I do need to earn 💲).
We do offer consulting services. Quick questions, where we review your code/issue and point you in the right direction or edit your code are billed by the hour.
We do have free consultations when you have larger projects, where you want us to develop the code for you. In either case, you can go here and let us know what you’re looking for help on. And, of course, we always have discounts to our Udemy courses here.
Quick Icons script by HellBent
Speaking of Hellbent, did you see his Quick Icon script on the forum for quickly creating an icon? We were on a call over the weekend and he demonstrated it to me. Really cool! I plan to borrow from it heavily!
Did you see our news about the Intro to Classes course? We’re still working on it but it already has over 2 hours of content and we’re working on adding more examples because classes are fairly abstract and having solid examples will really help us learn how to use them.
If you sign up to be notified you’ll get a 15% discount once we offer the course for sale. 😲
This is a great conversation between Maestrith and RaptorX / Isaias Baez discussing using classes and V2 (the course is based on V1 but we thought it important to mention some things available in V2)
🅰️HK’s best kept secret!
I’m always amazed at how many AutoHotkey users that don’t use HotStrings! They’re one of the simplest and easiest ways to be more productive! If you’re not using HotStrings, trust me, you should! In about 30 minutes Ryan Wells and I outlined around 80 uses of them. They’re just AMAZING! In this video I demo just how easy they are to create. I’m working on a QAP knock-off that will focus on creating snippets & HotStrings. I’m hoping to make some progress soon…
This was an interesting interview. I was fortunate enough to have met Rick in person as he’s here in the DFW area. Unlike most AutoHotkey users, he’s a computer science major. Rick mostly works in Object oriented languages like C++, Java, C and more. His first use of AutoHotkey was being able to automate a GUI in another program (which AHK is amazing at!)
Productivity tips ⚡️
Step 1️- 🚀Very quickly write pseudo code of what you want done
Step 2️- Write the actual code that will work (but not “pretty”)
Step 3️- Refactor your code!
Step 4️- Rinse & Repeat!
A spot of Humor 🤣
Are you one of the people that fit this image? I know a few… BTW- do you find it refreshing to press the F5️ key❓ 🤣
Quick Access Popup news
The other day I was on a client call and she wanted a very complex / advanced way to automate sending emails to employees (based on criteria in a database). While this is something we definitely could do, it would also have taken a decent amount of time to build into our tool (so it was cost prohibitive). I mentioned to her there was a super simple solution for having distribution lists and then recorded this video showing how I do it with Quick Access Popup.
🗣️Quotable quotes💭
If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done — Bruce Lee
Do the hard jobs first. Easy jobs will take care of themselves. — Dale Camegie
You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there — Yogi Berra
You must stop expecting perfection — either from yourself, or your employees, or your customers and clients. It will never — John Carlton
P.S. Special thanks to the following for purchasing multipleAutoHotkey Udemy courses this month!
2 Łukasz H.
2 Sune M.
2 Roman O.
2 Radosław J.
2 Radoslaw P.
2 Piotr M.
2 Patrycja Z.
2 Monika S.
2 Michał B.
2 Michal D.
2 Marta D.
2 Marcin J.
2 Malgorzata J.
2 Maja G.
2 Magdalena K.
2 Magdalena G.
2 Luiza G.
2 Konrad K.
2 Katarzyna S.
2 Katarzyna L.
2 Karolina N.
2 Karolina K.
2 KamilaM.
2 Kamil D.
2 Justyna B.
2 Julija K.
2 Julia D.
2 John Arnel G.
2 Jarosław K.
2 Jacek G.
2 Iwo S.
2 Haylan W.
2 Halina D.
2 Grzegorz S.
2 Edyta S.
2 Dorota K.
2 Dominika J.
2 Dawid M.
2 David S.
2 Charles W D.
2 Bartlomiej B.
2 Anna W.
2 Anna P.
2 Andrzej M.
2 Amadeusz G.
2 Aleksandra A.
2 AJANOU W.
🙏Favor for the-Automator (and AutoHotkey)
Do you watch Leila Gharani’s YouTube channel? If you use Excel you should as she, mostly, teaches Excel tips/tricks however today she released a video on AutoHotkey! Since she has over 1.6 million subscribers 😲 I hope it will give some attention to AutoHotkey. I commented a couple of times on the video. Can you please do me a favor and like my comments? The hopes being:
She’ll make more AutoHotkey videos (thus raising awareness of AHK to more people)
People that watch her videos will come check out my YouTube channel.
I’d really appreciate it!!! Let’s get the world to be more aware of AutoHotkey!
April 7th AutoHotkey Newsletter
Howdy %Name%,
I watched an AutoHotkey YouTube video the other day by an “expert”. He was trying to “sell” his script/service to people. Unfortunately, he was getting into the nitty-gritty technical details about his code🤓. As a result, I think most people would find the video painfully dull and/or make them feel stupid ☹. I doubt he gets many people to purchase/adopt his approach.
In ALL forms of communication, you need to pay attention to your audience’s knowledge & interests!
If you’re talking to a client, boss, or colleague, drop the tech talk / “geek speak”. They don’t care about the nitty-gritty details about how something works; they are looking for solutions to their problems.
When you get into details, you’re not showing your audience how smart you are; you’re putting them to sleep and, in some cases, pissing them off 😡because they can’t follow what you’re saying.
Just remember, as Elmer Wheeler (considered to be America’s greatest salesman) “Sell the sizzle, not the steak🥩”.
Talk about solving their problems, and how your solution solves them. Most people really want to know
You’re competent
your solution will solve their problems
Now on with the show…
Intro to AutoHotkey Classes & Objects Course
Have you ever seen a cool script on the forum but realized it’s using a “class” and not sure how to use it? Want to improve the readability and maintenance of your code? Are you familiar with Functions and ready for the next step? Then our Intro to Classes course is for you! We’re finishing up production of it but wanted to let you sign up here. All people that sign up will get a 15% 😮 if/when they purchase. We haven’t decided on the final price yet however it will be more than our typical courses because it is more niche & advanced. I’m thinking the course should be available in a couple of weeks.
Default hotkeys for Editing / Reloading / Pausing / Suspending your scripts
When you’re creating a new script, it’s super helpful to have some default Hotkeys built into it while prototyping. Here I demo a few that I have built-in to my template for new scripts.
What I’ve automated in AutoHotkey
Sometimes it’s inspiring to see what others have done with AutoHotkey (not the actual coding). My playlist helps with this in general. I made this new video a little while back. How do you use AutoHotkey? Anything worth bragging about?
Searching for text within files
Sometimes I can’t remember what I’ve named a file OR I want to find files that use a bit of code. GrepWin is a great, 🆓 free tool that searches within files
Sending 💲 to Developing countries
If you live in a developing country or pay someone in one, you’re probably (painfully) aware how difficult, costly, and slow. Isaias lives in the Dominican Republic and has tried many different ways to get money. Most end up costing a fair amount to get the $ into his bank account. We tried Xoom (a paypal service) and were very impressed with speed and costs.
I’ve you frequent the AutoHotkey forum you’ve probably seen his posts. This interview with Tank was before I got to know him well, but we had a wonderful chat. As many others in AutoHotkey, he doesn’t have a background in programming yet does amazing things with AutoHotkey! BTW- if you didn’t know it Tank runs the AHK Forum.
Productivity tip⚡️ Stop thinking🧠, start doing
Don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis! Overthinking things won’t get you anywhere. Ask yourself “what is one small step I can do now to move towards my goal?” Get it done!
A spot of Humor
Gives a new meaning to “Hopeless Romantic” 🤣
Quotable quotes 🗣️ 💭
The secret to getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one. — Mark Twain
When someone tells me “no,” I just ask someone else. — Joe Glines
A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore — Yogi Berra 🐻
Put aside a healthy pile of “Up Yours” money, so you can walk away from any situation you don’t like, and know you’ll survive. — John Carlton
